


Look Me In The Eye (And Tell Me My Name)

by AuroraKant



Series: January Prompts [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: (Between Ric and Tim), Aftermath of a Traumatic Brain Injury, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bea Bennett Is Better Than All Of Us, Brotherly Bonding, Bruce Wayne's A+ Parenting, Dick Grayson is Ric Grayson, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Reconciliation, Ric Grayson Fix-It, Ric Grayson Needs a Hug, Short-Term Memory Loss, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28555269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraKant/pseuds/AuroraKant
Summary: It started with a headache, but then again everything always started with a headache for Ric. Even his very first – new – memory of opening his eyes in Gotham General was overshadowed by the intense and immeasurable pain behind his temples. He had known nothing back then – no, that was wrong.He had already known pain.Or: Ric has a bad night - not his first but probably also not his last - and for once it isn't Bea who catches him... but Tim.
Relationships: Bea Bennett & Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson & Tim Drake
Series: January Prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086611
Comments: 26
Kudos: 137
Collections: Bat Family 18+ Discord Server January Prompt Event





	Look Me In The Eye (And Tell Me My Name)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marzue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzue/gifts).



> Hi Marzue, my darling!!  
> I really, really hope you like this!!  
> Some delicious Ric Angst just for you - and the prompt Sick Fic... or Sick Ric 😉  
> (and a more realistic look at some of the long term side effects of getting shot in the head)

It started with a headache, but then again everything always started with a headache for Ric. Even his very first – _new_ – memory of opening his eyes in Gotham General was overshadowed by the intense and immeasurable pain behind his temples. He had known nothing back then – no, that was wrong.

He had already known pain.

But even waking up from a gunshot wound to the head and a medically induced coma, was nothing compared to the pounding that currently shook his brain apart.

Ric’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel of his cab, another wave of dizzying agony crashing down on him. He would… he would have to stop driving soon. Maybe he could find a place to sleep tonight?

Bea liked it when he came to her on nights like these.

Yeah, Bea would know what to do. Maybe she would be able to figure out where Ric had put his meds. He was… unsure of their current location. But they could help. His meds would help. That’s what they were for, weren’t they?

Hadn’t he already taken them today? Ric was no longer sure.

He tore his gaze away from the knuckles turning white around the wheel, his skin taunt, the tension high, focusing on the street instead. That was important. He was a cab driver after all – road safety was his top priority. His eyes found darkness, which made sense, since Ric had said okay when Tommy asked him if he could cover his night shift.

The clock blinked red – 11:34pm – on his dashboard.

It made sense – and yet Ric had the strong feeling that something was wrong.

There were buildings to his left and right, but no other car shared the street with him. Ric was grateful for that… his own car had crossed the middle of the road, his inattention making him steer away from his supposed path. He was driving in walking speed – something that was not required or encouraged on a street like this.

It was… Ric leaned forward to get a better glimpse of his surroundings, and he found the buildings surrounding him to be completely foreign. He didn’t recognize the bright red front porch nor could he remember ever seeing that yellow door.

Just where the fuck was he?

Ric let his cab roll down the street, his eyes never ceasing their quest to find a clue regarding his location. But… nada. Nothing. Ric didn’t recognize anything. Not even the street name when he finally found it: Jackson-Pollock Road.

Ric knew who Jackson Pollock was, he had found a book on post-modern artists in Dick’s apartment when he broke in to steal some cash, but as far as he was aware there was no Jackson-Pollock Road in Blüdhaven.

In a better world, Ric would trust himself enough to know that there was no Jackson-Pollock Road in Blüdhaven. But the headache made him doubt himself and experience had proven often enough that Ric was a liability when it came to remembering things, least of all, remembering himself.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened once more, when the agony intensified, and tears sprung to his eyes.

 _Fuck_.

He… he couldn’t even remember the last time a migraine had gotten this bad. Maybe because he’d taken an Oxy and went to sleep… but… His hands were big and clumsy, when Ric reached towards the compartment over the front-seat. He fiddled with the lock, each beat of his heart like a rapier piercing his head, each second spent scrambling for something, a second spent in pain.

The thing finally opened, spilling McDonalds receipts all over the floor. Ric pushed them out of the way, his fingers searching for something he knew wasn’t there. And, yeah, Ric couldn’t find his meds. None of them. Not even a shitty little box of Advil.

His head hit the back of his seat; Ric desperate to pull deep breaths into his lungs. Tears were running down his cheeks, since Ric was unable to stop them, just as he was unable to keep his hands from trembling and his frame from shaking.

He had to…. He had to do something.

What could he do?

He could go to Bea! Bea said she liked it better when he came to her in nights like these! Yes, Bea felt like a good option!

Ric forced his eyes open – when had he closed them? – and sent a glance down the road his cab was parked on. Where was he? He didn’t know that giant birch tree and he had never seen a house quite as destroyed as this.

How…?

Ric looked at his hands, white and frozen around the wheel, and he looked at the seat next to him, receipts and trash strewn around. A deep cold settled inside of him, next to the burning agony of his pulsing head.

So, it was one of _those nights_.

One of the nights were not even an Oxy could help. One of the nights Ric couldn’t trust himself as far as he could throw Bea, because… because his mind was so broken, his short-term memory retained nothing. Come morning – or whenever this hell ended – and Ric would remember nothing of it, the night a complete blank. Until then?

Ric had no idea how often he had returned to the present already, how long he had driven for… and in a few moments he would have forgotten his realization again. The pain gleefully destroying his concentration certainly didn’t help.

The clock in front of him read 12:12am. A new day had begun.

Maybe he could… his hands trembled when he reached for one of the receipts, and his cheeks were wet, when he searched for a pen. It took too long to find either, in the end Ric could barely read his own handwriting. It read like the words of someone else.

“No short-term memory. You are lost. Don’t drive. Try to reach Bea. No meds in car.”

This would have to do.

The tiny piece of paper tightly clutched in his hand, Ric leaned forward, once again focusing on the outside world, instead of the hurricane raging in his head. It was night. Of course, it was night. Ric had taken Tommy’s night shift when the older man had asked.

How late was it? Maybe Ric could return to the station early tonight, he didn’t seem to have any passengers with him. It was exactly 1am, the perfect time for club goers in need of a cab. He turned around just to make sure, since his mind liked to play tricks on him sometimes… but no, the cab was empty.

Why… why was there so much trash on the floor?

Ric tried to find a reason behind the chaos, when the pain behind his temples reminded him of his goal. He should return to the station. It wasn’t safe to drive with a migraine like this. Bea would be disappointed in him, if she knew how he had endangered himself and others. Better reach a safe haven before that could happen.

He started the car – and why had he parked in such a dark and desolate part of Blüdhaven? – and turned a corner. His body was tense to ensure, he didn’t accidentally steer the car away from the street. He had done that once or twice, in his early days as a cab driver, when he hadn’t yet grown used to the muscle spasms that came with a TBI. He was better nowadays, some part of his brain learning how to counteract most of the worst spasms his body had to offer.

And yet… migraine days were also always dangerous because of the other symptoms that liked to haunt him.

Caution was better than… Caution was better than Ric landing in yet another hospital. Was there a saying? Ric had the feeling that there was a saying for this… but no matter how hard he concentrated; he couldn’t figure out what it was.

Maybe that was due to the pulsing behind his temples as well.

Pain always made it harder to remember things. Harder even than it usually was. And Ric was no longer a person who could win while playing Memory. No, Ric was a person who cluelessly drove his car through a dark city, not quite sure where he was or where he was going.

He reached a crossroad, and Ric stopped the car to wait out his turn. The buildings in front of him didn’t look like Blüdhaven buildings. They were too dark for that. Blüdhaven was bathed in neon, which was shit for Ric’s head six nights out of ten, but the streets in front of him were dark – even in the desperate light of the streetlamps.

It almost looked like… it almost looked like Gotham.

But what would Ric be doing in Gotham? The city was vile, and he didn’t particularly care for the people there. All his memories of Gotham were… bad, for a lack of a better word. Ric had forgotten so many things, over and over again, but he would never forget the sight of his own head being hit by a bullet.

Sometimes he closed his eyes and that was all he could see.

The light in front of him turned green, the change painful to Ric’s sensitive eyes. He started the car, crossed the street, and… what was he doing here? He glanced at the clock… at 2:45am?

Why was he even driving his cab? Wasn’t today his free day? But… oh, yeah, he had offered Tommy to take his shift instead. The man’s wife wasn’t doing so well.

Ric searched the streets around him for a clue, but he could find nothing, only old gothic buildings with a touch of art deco and a whole lot of darkness. There was… Ric’s eyes found the trash on the seat beside him, and they followed the trail until they noticed the crumpled receipt in Ric’s hand.

The hand clutching the steering wheel.

The hand currently controlling the driving car, Ric was sitting in.

As quickly as he could, Ric steered his car into a free parking place. His hands were trembling. He was in pain. There was a piece of paper in his hand. The handwriting was atrocious, the words foreign… So, it was one of those nights.

 _Again_.

Ric read the message a couple of times - _No short-term memory. You are lost. Don’t drive. Try to reach Bea. No meds in car_ – trying to retain as much of it as possible, before he opened his seatbelt and grabbed the keys to his cab.

He had multiple options. He could stick to his previous plan: leaving the car behind and searching through the foreign city on his own until he found a payphone - did he even have cash? Or he could lock himself in the car, hide the keys and worry about the fact that Ric would have to deal with whatever the consequences were on his own in just a couple of minutes.

Neither option was a good one.

_Fuck._

Ric had no phone – lost in a night like this two months ago – and apparently, he didn’t even have meds to stop his head from exploding. He had to… he had to reach Bea. Yes. That was… she would know what to do.

She always knew what to do.

Ric stumbled out of the car, receipt and keys the two things he kept holding onto. A wave of nausea hit him when he changed his latitude, and before he knew it, he was crouching down next to his cab – he would always recognize his cab – vomit decorating the street.

He wanted to cry.

He… oh, he was crying. Tears dripping down his cheeks, decorating his misery. He had to get up. He had to…

Ric had to do something. His migraine was unimportant. He had to do something.

Find… someone?

The world was a churning mess when Ric managed to get his feet back under himself. A churning mess made out of darkness and gargoyles and pain. It took him a couple of deep breaths, until everything settled down a bit – but Ric never stopped shaking.

There was a piece of paper in his hands. Ric recognized it as one of the old McDonalds receipts he kept in his car… but it was his own horrible handwriting that greeted him.

Ah.

 _Fuck_.

So, the person he had to find was Bea.

He could do it.

Ric took the first step away from the street and onto the sidewalk, still trembling, still utterly confused. He had to… he had to find a payphone.

Now that Ric was no longer in a car – and where had he parked it? He was taking Tommy’s shift tonight; he would have to call the station soon… it was already well past 3am – he had enough time to really observe the buildings surrounding him.

They were tall and dark but not… destroyed. Not ugly and broken and poor. Instead, they looked as if someone cared about what happened to them… The owners would probably be very mad, should Ric be sick all over their porch.

There was not a person in sight, not a payphone on the horizon.

If this was truly a better part of the city, it would make sense that nobody was walking around this late at night – how late was it? Ric had lost the watch Bea had gifted him a month ago.

Some part of him knew that it was the poor parts of the city that were full of life at night, people desperate to survive in an uncaring system.

Ric wasn’t sure if he knew that because he had experienced it himself, or it that was simply common knowledge his brain had been able to hold onto. It was weird that way – sometimes Ric simply knew things that he had no business knowing. And sometimes Ric forgot things he was so desperate to keep on remembering.

He walked and walked and walked.

Sometimes he stopped, or fell, or stumbled, because his head hurt so badly, because it was so hard to keep his limbs coordinated and strong, because up turned into down, and right to wrong. He threw up…. Again, or maybe for the first time that night.

In the end it was always the piece of paper in his hand that made him keep on walking. Because he had to find Bea. He had to find a place safe enough to fall apart.

The sun was starting to turn the first clouds grey from behind, when Ric stumbled again at the steps of a fancy office building. When he looked up, his knees smarting from the rough asphalt they had hit, his arms and eyes so tired they burned with exhaustion, it was an unfamiliar sight that greeted him. So much steel and glass.

Ric hadn’t known buildings like these existed in Blüdhaven.

It was morning… the night was over and Ric… he looked down at his hands, at the smudged writing on a McDonald’s receipt… and he didn’t stand back up. He didn’t want to.

He was tired, and in pain, and aching, and… and he couldn’t remember things. Not even why it might be worth to continue his walk. _His fight_. Maybe it would be okay if he just waited here, maybe everything would turn out alright.

Maybe he would simply lose consciousness and turn into one of Blüdhaven’s nameless dead. Right now, Ric wouldn’t even be mad about it.

He would have to call the station… His boss was probably wondering where Ric was – and he had promised Tommy… but his phone was lost, just as Ric was, sitting on the steps of a nameless office building, in a city he couldn’t recognize.

With his knees pulled close, Ric allowed himself to rest his head. He closed his eyes, ignoring the light, ignoring the pain. His own breathing lulled him into a sense of security, his own heartbeat reassuring him that he was real.

Why was he here?

Maybe that was no longer a question Ric was supposed to ask himself. Maybe he should just stop fighting against the armies of forgotten things.

“Hello? Can I help you? Are you in pain? This is not- This is an apartment building, but I can bring you to a friend of mine, Dr. Leslie Thompkins… she has a free clinic. You don’t have to pay for the treatment you get there. I… Hello?”

A hand on his shoulder, and Ric’s head snapped up, an action immediately punished by a fierce stab of pain behind his left eye, the place most of the damage of that dammed bullet had occurred. In front of him was a young man – a teenager, really – with concern starkly written on his face. He seemed… familiar. But thinking hurt, and Ric was too tired to make sense of the face swimming in and out of focus in front of him.

“Dick? No… Ric, sorry… what are you doing here? Oh, fuck!”

Ric simply blinked, his brain barely categorizing what the kid had said. He knew him? Was that it?

“Ric? Hey, can you look at me?”

He was trying. Ric was really trying. But his eyes wanted to fall closed, and his head hurt. This stranger simply wasn’t worth it, not when Ric had walked for god knows how long. He was exhausted.

“Can you at least tell me where you are hurt? _Please_?”

The stranger’s voice was so full of concern, Ric took pity on him. And, hey, maybe the guy could help Ric find Bea. Ric was sure that that was his goal – he had to find Bea.

“I… do I know you?”

The stranger recoiled as if Ric had hit him. Ah, so they had known each other then. Good to know. Ric would forget it soon enough again.

“Um… yes, Ric, I am… I am Timothy Drake. One of the children Bruce Wayne adopted. We met before.”

“Oh…”

“Can you tell me where you’re hurt? This would- I would really like to know?”

The kid was desperate, that was easy to see. Ric just wanted it to stop, the pain and the confusion and the pity. Mostly, Ric wanted to sleep, maybe take an Oxy to ensure that he would wake up tomorrow and be himself again.

“Head… my head hurts… and… here.”

Ric pushed the piece of paper towards the kid. The piece of paper explained it all. The piece of paper made it clear that it was Bea he needed. It would…

Ric looked up, at the stranger standing in front of him, at the concern that stood so obvious on this strange kid’s face and said:

“Sorry… Do I know you?”

* * *

Tim had left his apartment building prepared for an early day at the office. After that he could vanish to San Francisco to spend some time with his friends, ignoring the pain and the loneliness building in his chest. They were old companions by now. Gotham was kind of empty with Jason no longer talking to any of them, Dick in isolation in Blüdhaven, and even the brat busy with his Teen Titan friends.

Tim mostly returned for Wayne Enterprises. And for the girls, but he wouldn’t tell them that. Over the years Tim had come to like spending time with people – he liked existing within a tightknit group that looked out for each other. The Bats hadn’t been something like that for ages now.

So… Tim had been surprised when he found a homeless man sitting on the front steps of his apartment building. He had been horrified when he realized that it was his brother sitting there looking hurt and lost. And he had been… _heartbroken_ when every few minutes Dick would look at him and ask him who he was.

With a lot of empty promises and comforting words, Tim had managed to lure Dick into his apartment, and now, his older brother sat on the couch – white, designer, very expensive and super uncomfortable – and held his head. Tim, on the other hand, had fled to the kitchen, where he now stood, clutching the countertop, trying to regulate his breathing.

He couldn’t get the words of that dammed piece of paper out of his head.

_No short-term memory. You are lost. Don’t drive. Try to reach Bea. No meds in car._

How long had this been going on?

For fucks sake! Tim had found his big brother, his mentor, his idol, on the steps of his home, with tear tracks down his cheeks, and sick splattered all over his jeans. Dick’s knees had been scratched, the skin broken in places where Dick must have fallen… looking at the swaying body sitting on his couch, Tim would bet that Dick’s balance wasn’t what it used to be.

What was Tim supposed to do now?

He had offered Dick some strong pain killers, and after Tim had explained to Dick three times that he was his brother, that he wouldn’t hurt him, that they were in a Gotham city apartment, Dick had finally taken them. And yet… Dick wasn’t asleep.

No, Dick was wide awake and frightened.

Tim could still read Dick’s body, even if he no longer understood his mind. He could still see the fear in Dick’s hunched shoulders, and the pain in his trembling hands.

But it wasn’t really Dick’s discomfort that made Tim’s heart beat faster and his eyebrow twitch. It was the fact that Tim hadn’t recognized him, that put him on edge.

Tim had thought Dick to be a homeless man, the kind of person a city like Gotham produced in the hundreds because the system was broken and the city falling apart. And even looking at his brother now, Tim understood why he had thought just that.

Dick was thin, his jaw no longer dashing, but rather painfully cutting. His cheeks were taunt, his big, blue eyes confused and lost. His hair was gone – the scar so obvious, Tim could feel the unease building in his stomach every time he caught a glimpse of it.

His brother was also… dirty, in the way people without resources were. His clothes were worn and old and unwashed, his jeans ripped and flicked and ripped again. The hair he had was oily, and his skin tone spoke of a certain lack of nutritional food. Vegetables were expensive after all.

Some part of Tim wanted to give Dick the fault for his sorry state, but… that would be needlessly cruel. It didn’t matter that Tim’s heart was yelling and crying and telling him, if Dick had only stayed with them, he would never have fallen this far.

Because what had they given him? Nothing.

After waking up confused in that hospital room, they had given Dick no reason at all to come with them and trust them…. And after Bruce showed Dick the video of _the incident_ … Tim couldn’t really fault Dick for running away. Or “physically distancing himself from an emotionally and mentally harmful situation” as Tim’s therapist called it.

Tim turned off the tab, two glasses of water in front of him.

He shouldn’t leave Dick alone for too long. Not in the state of mind he was in.

Taking the water, Tim returned to the living room. Hopefully his distress was no longer visible, hopefully his mask was firmly back in place. Even as Ric, Dick never quite managed to stop worrying – or maybe he simply never stopped reading other people.

“Hey… I brought you a glass of water.”

Dick’s head shot up, confused eyes meeting his. Tim didn’t wait for the question this time around, he simply answered Dick before he could ask:

“I am Tim Drake, your brother. We met once before after you woke up in the hospital. You are in my Gotham city apartment, since you are experiencing a… a bit of a short-term memory problem.”

And how tempted Tim was to just call Leslie or another expert in the field of neuroscience and have them solve this problem… but he couldn’t do that to Dick. He couldn’t force him to go to another doctor, another stranger, while he was unable to give informed consent.

(and it wasn’t as if this was an urgent situation. Tim had read the books, and reports. He had collected the data – this was a common, if unfortunate, side effect of TBIs like the one his big brother had suffered)

Dick stared at him, swallowing some of the water Tim had pushed into his hands. His voice sounded rough when he spoke – just as he had sounded rough the last five times this had happened:

“Oh… so, it is one of those nights then. We need to call Tommy! I covered his shift tonight.”

Tim had called the company Dick worked for thirty minutes ago, to explain to them that Dick had had an episode and that they shouldn’t worry. It had been painful to find out so much about his brother’s current lifestyle that way.

Tim hadn’t known that Dick partially lived in his cab, especially when he failed to find a place to sleep at night. Tim hadn’t known that Dick was too low on money to pay for his meds regularly, and instead was substituting lifesaving medicine with alcohol and over the counter drugs. Tim hadn’t known that all of them had to thank a Blüdhaven pub owner called Bea for the continued survival of their brother.

Tim hadn’t known that that cursed bullet had taken more from Dick than just his memory.

 _Why hadn’t he known_?

How could Bruce allow Dick to leave? Why had all of them looked away and listened to Batman? They never listened to Batman! That was their whole thing!

Robin was supposed to question Batman’s darkness. Robin was the foil to Bruce’s stubbornness… But after Jason… after Selina… after that punch… was it really Tim’s or Babs’s or Damian’s fault for not calling out to Dick? Or were they just different clogs in this system created to tear them down?

Tim was getting a headache of his own.

“I called your boss, Ric. It’s alright. They understand – you even had a few extra hours I could cash in for you. Is your head feeling better?”

“My head?”

“Yeah, you said it hurt when I found you.”

“Oh… yeah… yeah, it doesn’t hurt too badly.”

Something flickered in Dick’s gaze, the silence between them heavy as Tim contemplated how to continue their conversation. Tim tore himself away from his own angst, his own whirlpool of guilt and fear and loneliness. Instead, he focused on Dick’s eyes – and he saw the moment Dick returned to the present, his eyes panicked for a short moment as they danced through Tim’s sterilized living room.

Tim had places in which he could be Tim Drake – this city apartment was no such place.

“Who are you?”

The question hurt like a gut punch every single time Dick asked. Every single time there was blank confusion in Dick’s eyes, and a frown on his forehead. Tim wanted… he needed his big brother back. At least one of them, even if Tim desperately missed both.

Tim couldn’t be the big brother. He couldn’t. Not like this. Not while Jason and Dick were still alive, just lost. Not while Damian still hated him for not being Dick. Not while Bruce couldn’t look him in the eyes.

“I am Tim Drake. Your brother. You’re having short-term memory problems at the moment, but we’ll figure it out.”

“I… did you call Bea?”

Tim looked up. This was a deviation from the norm. Usually the first thing Dick noticed was the city or his job – usually Bea only appeared in the conversation if Tim left Dick alone or showed him the piece of paper that had explained it all.

Not now, however.

Now Bea was the very first question.

There was a spark in Dick’s eyes that hadn’t been there earlier.

“I tried to call her, but the number you gave me didn’t work.”

“Oh… must have… numbers get all jumbled up on nights like these.”

Tim hated nothing more than the knowledge that Dick… that Dick had had many nights like these, that he had survived them on his own, or with only one person by his side. Dick was a survivor, a fighter, and Tim… he so desperately wanted to help Dick fight. _He wanted to help him_.

How many nights without rhyme or reason had Dick spent on his own? How many times did the Bat ignore his son stumbling around a foreign city seeking solace and safety?

Tim would put a stop to this.

It was Robin’s job to put Batman in his place.

Tim might no longer be Robin – and he was okay with that, really – but he would always stay _a Robin_. And that meant it was high time something changed.

“That’s okay, Ric. As I said, we’ll figure it out.”

“We… we are in Gotham city, right?”

A shiver ran down his spine, excitement cursing in his veins. Dick was coming back, the episode slowly ebbing away, the confusion slowly bleeding back into the hidden corners of Dick’s mind.

“Yes” – and Tim couldn’t help himself, he was smiling – “Yes, we are.”

“And you… Tim Drake, right?”

A sigh so deep it might have touched the depths of the oceans escaped Tim. The episode was over. What was left of Dick’s memory was slowly returning to him, the pieces fitting back together. Slowly Dick’s confused face morphed into Ric’s, an angry frown between his eyebrows.

Maybe now…?

“Yes. Your brother. How’re you feeling?”

Something complicated happened in Ric’s face, and for a moment Tim had forgotten that Ric didn’t like that. That they hadn’t given Ric a reason to like them, really. And yet Ric answered:

“I am… I feel like a truck took a dump inside my head. Which… judging by the fact that I have no idea where I am or how I got here, isn’t too far off.”

Ric was so different from Dick… And yet… it was his brother. It was the same person, just a different version of him.

Such a simple truth and yet such a fundamental revelation.

“Yeah, um, I found you on the steps of my apartment, clutching a McDonald’s receipt with your own handwriting on it…”

For a moment silence reigned inside this apartment, a place far too used to the loneliness of unspoken words and missed company. And then Dick – or was it Ric? And should Tim treat them as different people? – sighed and said:

“Thank you… like, I know, I wasn’t always… I’m not… Thank you for not being an ass. I could… I don’t know where I would be if… Just… thanks, man.”

It spoke of the kind of experiences Dick had made, that his first impulse was to thank Tim for not being an asshole. Something fiercely protective took hold of Tim. His brother would never have to fear some idiot taking advantage of his state ever again – they would solve this. Tim could solve this.

He was the world’s greatest detective after all. He should be able to find a solution that satisfied all of them.

“No problem. No, really. I… I wanted to say sorry for what Bruce did. And for how the rest… how the rest of the family – including me – treated you. This was the least I could do.”

“I don’t need your pity. I am not-“

The fire was back, and Tim was almost grateful for it. Fire meant life. Fire meant passion. Fire meant future.

“No! I don’t mean it like that! Ric-I- We- We didn’t respect your identity and your agency as a person. And I am sorry. Because- Because all of us should know how that feels. How much it hurts when that gets taken away from you. We’ve all been there. The only difference? All of us had someone to help us through it. But you didn’t. And that… that’s on us.”

“I have Bea.”

Their eyes met, steel on icy blue, and Tim almost smiled. He had missed his big brother – and he had missed these familiar blue eyes that challenged him:

“And I am sure she is an amazing person. But that doesn’t absolve us from our responsibility. It means… hell, until today I didn’t even know she existed, and now I want nothing more than to meet her and be charmed by the person who befriended Ric Grayson.”

With a sigh Ric dropped back against the couch, his body melting into the unforgiving fabric. It wasn’t… It wasn’t a welcoming gesture, but it also wasn’t an angry one. Exasperated, Tim would call it, but he couldn’t be completely sure. Dick had changed too much for that – and maybe for the first time Tim was okay with that.

He still missed the Dick of his memories, but maybe it was time he stopped acting as if his brother had died again.

“What?”

“I am too tired for this, Tim Drake… I just spend many hours being lost in limbo… Fuck! My job! Shit! _My car_!”

“I… I called them for you. They said they understood. And I am sure we’ll find your car…”

Dick looked at him, really looked at him, and Tim knew that this was the crucial moment. Either Dick would go – or Ric would stay. Either Tim would get a chance to repair the damages done – or Ric would return to a support system of one.

Sweat was collecting on the back of Tim’s button down – and in all the haste to call Dick’s boss, Tim had forgotten to call his own – his heart beating fast and hard.

And then… Ric smiled:

“If you continue like this, Tim Drake, whom I don’t know, I might actually start to like you.”

A weight fell of his shoulders, atlas shrugging for the very first time in a long, long while. Tim smiled as well, when he answered, offering his hand as a token of his trust:

“Well, if you are willing… I would very much like to get to know you, Mr. Ric Grayson”

Dick – No, Ric took Tim’s hand.

It was a beginning. A seed planted in fertile earth.

Tim would ensure that it bloomed.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, Bookmarks and Kudos let my heart beat faster!!! <3


End file.
